Rachel Corrie Wasn't the Only ISM Member Playing Chicken with a Bulldozer That Day (PJM Exclusive)

God, sometimes we Israelis are idiots. Leave aside the colossal fashla (you call it a snafu) of the ill-timed announcement of the expansion of the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood that sent the Obama administration into a hissy fit. What we’re doing with the latest “lawfare” case against Israel, the trial brought by Rachel Corrie’s parents, is another beaut.

In March 2003, a young American woman named Rachel Corrie was crushed and killed by an IDF bulldozer in Gaza. And now her parents are in Israel, suing Israel. Last week, the Israeli newspaper Yediot portrayed her as a saintly martyr and featured a false photo of the incident, taken at a different time and with a different bulldozer. The anchor of Israel Radio’s morning commute show rebuked Israel’s actions, and the IsraeliYES cable network presented Rachel, a two-hour paean to Corrie and an indictment of Israel.

We’re nuts.

We overlook the fact that Corrie’s death took place in the midst of the "intifada" terrorist onslaught against Israel and that she was working for a Palestinian-led organization as the first line of defense against Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield to stop terrorist suicide bombers. Just ten days before Corrie’s death, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus in Haifa, a few miles from the courthouse where the Corrie parents are suing Israel. Seventeen Israelis died in the attack, many of them teenagers.

Today, the parents of the dead are outraged by the attention Rachel Corrie is getting and by the chutzpah of the Corries embracing Israeli courts to rail against the country Rachel Corrie loathed.

The Palestinian-led group -- International Solidarity Movement (ISM) -- enlisted dozens of “internationals,” including Corrie, to serve as support troops. ISM admits that it “recognizes the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and occupation via legitimate armed struggle.” ISM’s creed translated into action: In May 2002, ten ISM members rushed into the Church of the Nativity to serve as human shields for Palestinian terrorists holed up there and desecrating the holy site. In Jenin in March 2003, an ISM woman hid a wanted Islamic Jihad terrorist, Shadi Sukiya, from the Israeli army. In Gaza in April 2003, two terrorists “had tea” with ISM members before they embarked on their mission to blow up Mike’s Place, a bar in Tel Aviv, five days later.

Members of the ISM have been knowingly aiding and abetting terrorists and disrupting the activity of the IDF meant to prevent the murder of Israeli civilians.

Corrie and her band of ISM internationals had been disrupting IDF activity in Rafah just yards from the infamous “Philadelphi route” along the Gaza-Egypt border. This was an area of intense terrorist activity and was -- and still is -- the location of Hamas tunnels.

An anonymous letter was circulating which referred to Corrie and the other expatriate women in Rafah as "nasty foreign bitches" whom "our Palestinian young men are following around.”

That morning [of Corrie’s death], the ISM team tried to devise a strategy to counteract the letter's effects. "We all had a feeling that our role was too passive," said one ISM member. "We talked about how to engage the Israeli military." That morning, team members made a number of proposals that seemed designed only to aggravate the problem.

...

"The idea was to more directly challenge the Israeli military dominance using our international status,” said the ISMer.

On the day of Corrie’s death, the new ISM aggressive actions involved placing themselves in severe danger. Eyewitness reports recorded immediately after Corrie’s death prove that the ISMers had knowingly decided to put themselves in harm’s way.

Reported here -- for the first time -- is the fact that prior to Corrie’s death at least two “internationals” had been pulled out from under the bulldozers at the last second.